Customer Reviews

Introduction to Geodesy: The History and Concepts of Modern Geodesy (Wiley Series in Surveying and Boundary Control)

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Reading this book I got the feeling that Mr. Smith couldn't quite decide if his audience was the layman or the surveying professional. For example, very little mathematics is used (even though there are topics in the book which would have been better served by a more mathematical treatment), while on the other hand many terms are used as though the reader should be familiar with them already.

I found the lack of a glossary frustrating, as was Mr. Smith's habit of using concepts chapters ahead of their defintion. The difficult subject matter was further obscured by numerous errors in the figures and text (such as refering to velocity as the second integral of acceleration.)

In the end, the book did give me a good qualitative feel for the issues germane to geodesy, but I had to work very hard to extract that information and found myself immediately looking for a more perspicuous text.

I bought this book to fill in knowledge gaps, not to learn geodesy as an expert. It answered lots of questions I had had about measurements, how surveys are performed, geodetic systems (datums and so on), the WGS, and the use of gravity. The details are all there, within about 100 pages in the middle of the book. Not bad at all.

This subject by its nature requires a mathematical treatment, so although the book does not go deeply into the math, it's sometimes heavy reading. Many of the illustrations deserve careful study, too. It's not light bedtime reading. I carried this book around for several days during and after a large GIS conference and periodically dipped into it. It works well in small doses.

I found Mr. Smith's book to be very informative and well written. He covers many aspects of geodesy from early history to modern application. He is apparently very knowledgable and has a broad spectrum of experiences which he writes about. There are some instances when Mr. Smith tells a large amount of information, maybe more than the average reader would require. There are other times that I wished he would tell me more. He has a writing style that tends to skip around alot. Just hang in there and you will get the information in another chapter. There is always the bibliography for reference, if, Mr. Smith didn't cover it, which is rare indeed. He covers such obscure subjects such as: coriolis effect, isostasy and dynamic heights. Throughout the book all of the illustrations are simple yet understandable in almost all cases.

I put this book in the same catgory as the ebay ripoff books, It's a very thin book with one page discussions on various topics, and simple cave man style geometry drawings.

So if you don't need it as a college text book, then please get a better book, as this one is nearly useless to understand how anything works in any concrete manner.

This book was on average OK. I thought it was a good overview but at the end I don't think I got as much as I wanted from it.